Thursday, June 18:

• The Love Machine (Ottawa, Canada – pop rock) (audio)
• The Balconies (Ottawa, Canada – pop rock) (audio)
• The Field (Sweden – electronic) (audio)

Friday, June 19:

• Boxer the Horse (Charlottetown, Canada – pop rock) (audio)
• Tyburn Saints (Brooklyn, USA – alternative)
• No Age (Los Angeles, USA – other) (audio)

Saturday, June 20:

• Eric Corne (Los Angeles, USA – roots) (audio)

Sunday, June 21:

• GZA (New York, USA – hip hop) (audio)
• The Cool Kids (Chicago, USA – hip hop) (audio)

• Queen’s School of Computing was visited by Eli Blevis in late October, an associate professor from the School of Informatics, Indiana University at Bloomington. Blevis is best known for his research in the field of sustainable interaction design, an area which draws from computing, cognitive science, and design criticism. I really enjoyed hearing about his research inspirations, as well as the multidisciplinary nature of his research. His talk raised some good questions as well: Are interaction designers to blame for the technological waste generated by our society? How can interaction design bridge technological divides in our world?
• The man behind the Copyright for Canadians campaign, Michael Geist, a law professor from the University of Ottawa, spoke last month of the ongoing copyright debacle in this country. He documents his own stance on this and other technology-related issues, as well as the may grassroots efforts in this country to ensure we don’t become a digital ghetto (a recent CBC Search Engine topic).
• Aging scientist Aubrey de Grey spoke at the first Changing the World conference in Toronto last month. He identifies several forms of cellular damage contributing to aging, and the prospect of repairing this damage as it occurs (as opposed to preventative or curative measures). With this approach, he hopes to be able to expend the human lifespan to an average of 150 years within 30 years time. Combining this estimate with the law of accelerating returns, he proposes an indefinite human lifespan will be attainable not much longer after that.
• Another Changing the World conference speaker which I enjoyed hearing from was Eric Chivian, a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his work on stopping nuclear war. Chivian’s current work involves environmental protection and the effect of biodiversity on human health. For instance, bears den for months but don’t develop osteoporosis or kidney problems. He also describes the medical applications of substances excreted by rare frogs. His talk was very enlightening, emphasizing the need to ensure the survival of such species are of great importance to our health.

“Little Brother’s my first young adult novel, a book about young people who use technology to fight for the restoration of the Bill of Rights to American politics, setting them square in the crosshairs of the war on terror.”

Apart from reading his daily contributions to Boing Boing, the first work I read by Doctorow was the novel Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town, a story of supernatural characters and free public-access wi-fi set in Toronto’s Kensington Market. Since then, I’ve been enjoying his podcast and short stories from Overclocked, as well as his latest mindbender, True Names, which pertains to rival post-singularity superintelligences competing in the race to convert all the matter in the universe to pure computronium. Aside from writing some wildly imaginative (and diverse) fiction, he is also occasionally featured on CBC’s Search Engine radio program, in which he discusses civil liberties in the digital universe.

Last night he was able to field some questions ranging from literary style to parenting to civil liberties and copyright reform (in fact, it was his coverage of the recent copyright reform debate in Canada that brought the issue to my attention). Afterwards I was able to meet him, whereupon I discovered he at one point was also a CogSci student such as myself! He then asked me a CogSci-related question in regards to whether his newborn daughter, who has just begun to giggle, is merely mimicking the laughing response of her parents, or if laughing is innate behaviour. My answer: as other primates are known to exhibit the laughing response, I imagine the laughing response is both instinctual AND learned, in that the behaviour is hard-wired, but an infant requires some contextual priming to learn how to evoke that proper response. Hopefully that suffices. I may have to check up on that idea and give an update.

This eclectic and lively band played Toronto’s El Mocambo on Monday night to a small audience, and marked my first lengthy exposure to their music; I first caught wind of Cloud Cult in 2003, listening to Ottawa’s CHUO while in my last year of high school – the song was “Breakfast With My Shadow” – and until this past week I had yet to hear a full album’s worth of material. 

To put it simply, a Cloud Cult performance is rewarding both sonically and visually. Strings and excellent male/female vocal harmonies are occasionally juxtaposed with electronic beats and loops, vocal modulation and megaphones. The band is accompanied by a visual artist, who attacks an initially blank canvas, creating a beautiful painting in response to the music. The painting is subsequently auctioned after the show, and I believe some of the proceeds from the painting go towards aiding environmental causes (aside from the singer holding an environmental science degree, the band tries to be as carbon-neutral as possible: an eco-friendly tour van, merchandise made from recycled materials, and a studio powered by geo-thermal and wind energy – but I digress). The painting, shown here, had a bid placed around 100$ just after the show ended (I’m not sure how much it finally went for).

I picked up their latest album, Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes), and sadly, it does not do their live show justice – however I am not disappointed. This concert was a great deal for 10$, and definitely raised the bar in terms of a full audiovisual experience.

For more information on Cloud Cult, see their last.fm page or myspace. Thanks to Ana for the photos from the show.

Listen: “The Ghost Inside Our House” by Cloud Cult from the album “Feel Good Ghosts”.